ns seem to carry us further from
the truth, others contain facts of Asiatic nature or history, as well as
of Polo's own experiences, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to
any hand but the Traveller's own. This was the view taken by Baldelli,
Klaproth, and Neumann;[14] but Hugh Murray, Lazari, and Bartoli regard the
changes as interpolations by another hand; and Lazari is rash enough to
ascribe the whole to a _rifacimento_ of Ramusio's own age, asserting it to
contain interpolations not merely from Polo's own contemporary Hayton, but
also from travellers of later centuries, such as Conti, Barbosa, and
Pigafetta. The grounds for these last assertions have not been cited, nor
can I trace them. But I admit _to a certain extent_ indications of modern
tampering with the text, especially in cases where proper names seem to
have been identified and more modern forms substituted. In days, however,
where an Editor's duties were ill understood, this was natural.

[Sidenote: Injudicious tamperings in Ramusio.]

61. Thus we find substituted for the _Bastra_ (or _Bascra_) of the older
texts the more modern and incorrect _Balsora_, dear to memories of the
Arabian Nights; among the provinces of Persia we have _Spaan_ (Ispahan)
where older texts read _Istanit_; for _Cormos_ we have _Ormus_; for
_Herminia_ and _Laias, Armenia_ and _Giazza; Coulam_ for the older
_Coilum; Socotera_ for _Scotra_. With these changes may be classed the
chapter-headings, which are undisguisedly modern, and probably Ramusio's
own. In some other cases this editorial spirit has been over-meddlesome
and has gone astray. Thus _Malabar_ is substituted wrongly for _Maabar_ in
one place, and by a grosser error for _Dalivar_ in another. The age of
young Marco, at the time of his father's first return to Venice, has been
arbitrarily altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond with a date
which is itself erroneous. Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormus as on
an Island, contrary to the old texts and to the fact; for the city of
Hormuz was not transferred to the island, afterwards so famous, till some
years after Polo's return from the East. It is probably also the editor
who in the notice of the oil-springs of Caucasus (i. p. 46) has
substituted _camel-loads_ for _ship-loads_, in ignorance that the site of
those alluded to was probably Baku on the Caspian.

Other erroneous statements, such as the introduction of window-glass as
one of the embellishments of t